


Exposure

by Shemagh



Category: Destiny - Fandom, destiny video game - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Life, Whump, medical setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 18:30:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20376166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shemagh/pseuds/Shemagh
Summary: A ghost belonging to a newly risen guardian meets tower medical staff in a search for answers to their guardian’s mysterious condition.





	1. Chapter 1

“Guardian. . . please. . .”

The small, geometric A.I. fidgeted their shell, hovering inches from the face of the only other figure in the room. They emitted a soft sigh and lowered their front segments in defeat. “It’s no use. . . you still can’t hear me at all, can you?”

The ghost continued to search the blank features in front of them. Whatever they were hoping to find stayed hidden from their reach. They sank back down in defeat, nestling back into the divot they had made in one of the medbay’s thin, small pillows with a faint crinkle.

There was not much in the room to draw their focus. It was pristinely kept and no doubt identical to the countless other rooms that lined the wards of the tower’s sprawling medical complex. Stark walls of white were broken up on one side by a blue and white patterned curtain that served to deny the gaze of curious passersby through the room’s entrance, itself an entire wall of glass, half of which slid open on a track to grant entry.

On the opposite side of the room, there stood a counter and a set of cupboards, unremarkable and generic, as well as a couple of trash bins and a computer monitor attached to a pivoting arm secured to the wall.

Another monitor was mounted along the back of the small room, just above a metal strip that held various instruments securely to the wall for ease of access. All of the information the guardians at the new guardian intake facility had managed to gather about the guardian was splayed across the screen. 

The only two pieces of furniture in the small cell were a short, wheeled stool tucked beneath the swivel monitor, and a padded table covered end to end with a thin sheet of paper and pressed flush against the right wall.

Upon the table sat a woman, deathly pale and motionless, save for the subtle movement of her lips, responding to a conversation nobody they had met so far could hear or understand. Her pale, bare feet dangled above a floor of white linoleum tile, recently sterilized and shining from the glare of the harsh lights above.

The ghost focused their gaze on the woman’s hand, allowing themselves to become entranced by the swirling light that flashed and spiraled beneath her skin like smoke. Her thin, fragile fingers were still tinged pink from the meticulous attention paid to them by the caretaker frames in the tower’s new guardian intake facility. Beneath the dirt and grime of their travels was an Awoken, skin white as the surrounding walls and superseded in intensity only by the constellations beneath and a marking from her former life across her face.

A set of white eyes continued to pierce the wall beyond, unblinking and raw with irritation despite the thin lines of tears traveling downward in their failed mission to provide some form of relief, falling instead onto the fabric of the thin gown that hung from her gaunt frame.

Footsteps and muttered conversation caught the ghost’s attention, spurring them to rise and watch the doorway warily. They caught the ping of three ghosts bearing medical clearance identifiers and hastened to rehearse the story of their journey one final time in preparation for what would likely become a barrage of questioning. A final glance into their guardian’s helpless eyes steeled their resolve as the door began to slide open.


	2. Chapter 2

All the strength and courage left within the small A.I. drained away as the first doctor entered the room. The man was an absolute mountain, standing an easy seven and a half feet tall and bearing the unmistakably broad, muscular, powerful build of a titan. His face was mostly black metal plates, contrasted here and there by red ones, and highlighted by glowing red optics that sized up the environment from just inside the doorway. 

The ghost was still trying to process the sight before them when they realized that the giant Exo’s eyes had come to rest directly on them. They started with a small yelp and endeavored to shrink away, burrowing against their guardian’s neck as their single optic refused to lose sight of the imposing metal man.

It wasn’t until the ghost had begun to hide themselves behind a small spray of pure white hair that the exo’s eyes adjusted enough to notice the woman sitting stock still on the bed, so identical was her shade to that of the rest of the room. It took only a single short glance at the figure to determine there was no threat of imminent danger that so often accompanied guardians new to the power of their light. His faceplates relaxed and his eyes appeared to decrease in their glowing intensity to the point that the veritable mountain of a titan almost appeared safely approachable. A quick motion of his hand outside the doorway invited the entrance of two more guardians, both of whom began to set up station within the space. 

The second male that had entered upon the signal was, like the titan before him, dressed in a pair of thin blue scrubs covered by a long, white coat. He wore a helmet crested on both sides by intricate feathers that curved up and slightly inward. The ghost recognized the helm by its popularity amongst the warlock populace as a healing enhancer, but aside from gleaning his class, it was otherwise impossible to tell from a glance what race he might be. 

Two ghosts hung in the air about the room, sizing up the situation at hand and allowing their quivering comrade to observe the goings on from the safety of their new burrow in the gap of their guardian’s collarbone. A warm, cheery voice called out, shattering the cold silence that gripped the room mere seconds before.

“Traveler’s Light, look at you! A little void attuned hunter!”

The massive titan stood directly in the gaze of the motionless woman, sizing her up head to toe with an animated enthusiasm that entirely betrayed his fierce visage. “Now aren’t you a rare bird!”

“The poor dear. Look at her, Preacher. She looks half starved to death!” The third guardian peered around the doctor from her seat at the rolling chair in front of the swiveling monitor at the poor excuse of a guardian perched rigidly on the bed. “It’s okay, ghost. You can come out from there. . .” She coaxed. 

Ghost shifted their gaze from the hulk of an exo engaged in an eye to eye staring contest with their guardian over to the much less jarring exo woman in the distance after some hesitation, though they did not leave their post, instead opting to press even more tightly against the pale skin of their guardian’s lower jaw.

A pair of gloved hands reached into the makeshift hiding spot and very gingerly removed the ghost. The tiny A.I. cried out as the comforting heat of his guardian faded and was replaced by that of one they did not recognize. They found themselves gazing upon the helmeted face of the second doctor from their imprisonment in his cupped hands. 

“You’re alright, little ghost. We really could use your help.” He released his hold on the ghost with a single hand to point at each new person in turn.

“I’m Doctor Preacher. This here is Doctor Red-3.” The titan threw the ghost a slight head nod in salutation as he fiddled with the tiny cap of a small bottle of what appeared to be some form of eye drop. “Eve-2 over there is our witness and assistant this evening. Do you think you can tell us about what’s going on?” 

The gruff voice came in through a comm line, leaving no question that it came from the helmeted warlock. The star shaped bot contemplated his helmeted face for a few moments in silence before nodding. 

The warlock released the ghost on their own recognizance. They felt vulnerable beneath the gaze of the three guardians, but they answered each question as best they could. Where they found their guardian, who they travelled with on the way to the city, all the way to the present moment. 


	3. Chapter 3

“What happens when you try to reach this guardian?” Preacher asked.

“I can’t. She’s been like this since I reconstructed her spark. It’s all I could do to get her to the city for help.” The ghost turned their gaze to her, an overwhelming sense of longing plainly visible across their features. “There’s no connection. It’s like I’m trying to butt into a conversation, but there’s never a gap large enough to break through to her. I call and I call and finally something might click enough to get her to do something, but . . .well. . . It’s been slow moving.”

Red-3, having won his battle with the bottle cap, continued to listen in silence as he tilted the guardian’s head backward into his other hand and delicately placed several drops in each of her reddened eyes. He brushed her eyelashes delicately with the tip of his finger in an attempt to get her to reflexively blink, but she remained unmoved by the sensation, leading him to instead move her eyelids to blink by gently closing and opening them with his fingertips.

He placed his open hands into her line of sight, flexing his silicon-tipped fingers to bring them to her attention.

“These are sensors. We use them to gather information about how you’re doing. I’m going to give Eve here some of your current vitals so we can gauge your response to treatment.”

“You think she heard you?” The ghost’s voice was tinged with sarcasm.

“Not likely. Regardless, if I was struggling to handle suddenly being alive with a brain full of demons and I’d been jostled around all day without so much as a clue to my own existence and now-“ he motioned himself up and down with an outstretched hand “some giant robot man is feeling his way around me in yet another strange place, I think I’d at least appreciate if said person made an effort to explain themselves first. We don’t know what she’s processing, and we also don’t want her to just snap out of it and become instantly reactive, either.”

“Fair.” The little ghost was staring up at the titan with a gaze hooded by their top segments in a convincing approximation of sheepishness.

Beside them, Preacher-7 had already prepped vials, tubing, a bag of fluid and loaded a syringe with a dose of muscle relaxer. He set them all out on the table while Eve put out a call for a bed to be delivered. She sent her ghost out to help the medbay runners locate them and make sure all was in order.

“This is actually a fairly common phenomenon amongst new guardians. It’s not every day we see a nightstalker so fresh from revival, but void consumption tends to present similarly across classes, and it is apparent that this is what is affecting your guardian.” The ghost hovering around Red had a gentle, professional female tone about them as they spoke. 

“This is my ghost, Mercy. We’ve been catching these wandering minds together for many, many years.” Red-3 crooked his head to affectionately bump the floating ghost as his sensor-tipped fingers found their first mark on the inside of each of the guardian’s pale white wrists. Eve began to enter the ensuing callouts into the monitor as he spoke.

The nameless little A.I. was transfixed by the process, watching the doctor progress through a series of various “checkpoints” across their guardian’s body and listening in on the data he shared with the petite exo behind him. As they watched him move slowly upwards, their attention was ripped away by the sensation of being scanned themselves. They started in indignation, reeling on the sudden intruder only to come face to face with the other remaining ghost, who continued scanning, completely unphased.

“This ghost is not operating within an optimal range. Results of operational status scan inbound.” The offending ghost stated this fact bluntly. Her gaze was not on the ghost in question, but instead on Eve, who nodded her acknowledgement and continued her data entry.

“Excuse you?!” The ghost twirled their points in a huff.

“What Caduceus here is saying is that you’re a patient now, too. At this point we’re admitting you both for a couple days. At least until you two can communicate and she can function.” Preacher half sat on the table as Caduceus moved on to join Mercy in observing the awoken guardian’s scan.

“So here’s what we’re looking at. . . Your guardian needs exposure therapy. We’re going to get that course started here soon, but in addition to what we can do for her now, she will be placed in a room with about five other similarly afflicted guardians, and throughout the course of the next couple of days, she will be exposed to void energy from a doctor or therapist on a scheduled cycle. You, you just need to take it easy and focus on trying to reconnect and hopefully bond.”

The little bot looked dubious at the suggestion that reconnection was even possible.

“When you can reach her again, we need you to heal her back to a healthier time, provided you have built up the strength. It’s unlikely we’ll get her to have any kind of appetite for a while, so we need her to have some more body mass to chew through while she recovers. If you let us take care of all this-“ Preacher motioned to the entirety of the guardian’s head with a circular swish of an outstretched finger before moving on “- and you take care of all of this-“ He tapped the guardian’s bony elbow, “-we hope to have her back on track before too long at all. Provided she’s disease free, of course.”

Mercy’s voice chimed in from her post over Red’s shoulder.

“What I find to be peculiar here is that the severity of her condition is wholly inconsistent with her resurrection. To be this advanced at such a young age. . . She would have to have been exposed to a substantial source of void light before death.”

“There’s no question she’s been through some hard times-“ Red’s fingertips probed against small raised bumps beneath the skin on either side of her neck. He moved in for a closer look. “Any kind of dark age throughout time has historically been much rougher on the women. This here, this is dark age stuff. Serrated bars clean through her vocal folds. I’ve seen this a handful of times before.” He rose again, meeting the guardian eye to eye. “Who took away your song, baby girl?”

“Not to interrupt, but what’s so bad about void light? It’s still light, right? If it was bad, then why would the traveler make it at all?” The silent guardian’s ghost was the picture of pure confusion.

“Void light, or void energy, rather, is darkness bent to serve the light. While it certainly has its benefits, prolonged exposure to such unstable power without a buffer or canceling force can drive our guardians to madness and from there, into the grasp of the darkness. The void ‘speaks’ to guardians in whispers, barely detectable and harmless at first. Our guardians think they can make out words occasionally, and they gradually ‘hear’ more and more until the guardian becomes consumed with madness.” Caduceus looked to Preacher affectionately. “Even my guardian has fought with this.” Preacher turned his head in mild embarrassment but made no effort to deny his ghost’s claim.

Red’s fingertips began to glow a faint purple as he channeled his own void energy into them. “See, that’s the challenge with such an exquisitely rare little bird. Unless there’s something in place to contain them, they tend to fly away.” He placed his fingertips gently along the lymph nodes beneath the guardian’s jawline. “Alright, my dove, let’s see if we can get you back home.” 

Void began to creep across her skin, slowing the swirling flurries of chaos beneath as her eyes began to try to focus. Red withdrew his fingertips from contact, watching the woman as she leaned toward his touch in a subconscious attempt to regain some of the relief she had known only so briefly.

“Scientifically, this energy pulses through the mind and creates reverberations that can eventually grow stronger and override typical brain function. Contact with a properly tuned guardian can negate those reverberations, clearing their head. It’s why you usually find void hunters and titans paired into fireteams as support. Unlike most hunters, nightstalkers thrive within a team. Warlocks, however, tend to have a higher resistance to void sickness and as such tend to last longer on their own.” Preacher explained while silently motioning for Red’s attention as he spoke, directing the exo titan’s gaze to the awoken woman’s fingers as they sought weakly to find the source of the calming light.

“You want more of that peace and quiet, don’t you, sweetheart? I think I’ve got your pattern now. Come on back to us. . .” Red buried his glowing, void-tinged fingertips into the woman’s hair, and pressed them into her scalp with slight pressure. He circled her temples slowly with his thumbs and let his void energy wash over her.

The guardian lasted all of less than a minute against the titan’s experienced void handling before her eyelids fell shut over her dry, irritated eyes and her body slumped over helplessly in the titan’s grip. The massive exo let out a chuckle as he guided her limp head to his chest while Preacher tied her arm and installed an IV in the top of her hand. From the connection he drew several vials of blood which he relinquished to Eve to deliver for testing. The muscle relaxer was next in line, followed by a bag of saline, which he attached and held up while Red scooped the helpless, limp hunter into his arms. The difference in size and contrast of the giant titan and the short, starving hunter would have been comical under less serious circumstances, but her ghost captured the image regardless and stored it for later as they floated behind the doctors on their way to the bed now waiting just outside the glass sliding door.

“Got yourself another grandkid, Red?” A smiling runner quipped as the doctor lowered his payload carefully onto the bed. The nameless ghost settled themselves into a nest hastily built in their guardian’s hair and murmured to her in soft, encouraging tones when she fussed at the change in contact and orientation.

Red only smoothed his hand over his metal head and chuckled in response before slapping a hand on Preacher’s shoulder and turning to walk down the hall behind Eve.

“I’m beat, Preach. I’ll catch up on her progress during rounds in the morning.” He turned to his warlock colleague and the runner playfully as he walked, his faceplates crooked in a grin. “You take good care of that little one for me.”

Both guardians waved the titan off on his way and soon had their sleeping patient situated amongst like company in a shared room under the watchful eye of a caretaker frame. Preacher-7 draped a warmed blanket over the hunter’s sleeping form and took a moment to pat her ghost gently on their top points. “It gets better, little light. You watch over her, okay? Before you know it, we’ll have her right as rain.”

Ghost nuzzled against their guardian in response, their single optic fading down to embers in the quiet warmth and comfort of the ward. Preacher watched as the ghost lost their battle with sleep and powered down for the first time in weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> A little self-indulgent touchy medical fic to try to reignite my desire to write fanworks again. Thanks for stopping by!


End file.
